Re: [idn] Editorial comments on stringprep

[Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>]

At 12:07 PM 5/6/2002 +0200, Erik Nordmark wrote:
> > Historically, Unicode Consortium has always stated that mapping to
> > lowercase were more consistent and better than mapping to uppercase. At
> > least for Unicode before version 2. Don't remember any exact reasons, but
> > we can dig it up if you want us to.
>
>*If* there is such additional reasons it wouldn't
>hurt to state that as part of the motivation in the draft.

Erik, et al,

IETF specifications sometimes explain the reasons for particular choices, 
but mostly they don't.  On the average, we explain far more than ITU or ISO 
specifications, but far less that a complete historical narrative.

I think that the typical guidance is to provide whatever explanation that 
will help people understand WHAT the specification is, and to avoid 
explaining the WHY behind a choice unless the choice is so unusual readers 
will be distracted until they understand the reason for the choice.

That is, a specification could explain every decision in great detail, and 
it always is helpful to explain reasons... or is it?  All that explanation 
can get in the way of reading the actual specification.

And the explanation for my sending this long-winded note is that the recent 
postings on the mailing list frankly seem to be focusing on minor 
items.  All are valid but many/most are minor.

Your formal editorial comments were wonderfully diligent.  Far better than 
the IETF norm for Area Director feedback.  In such documents, adding minor 
suggestions is fine, because they are only part of a comprehensive set of 
comments.

The issue is follow-on discussion.  We should leave handling of the minor 
items to the document editors.  The minor items do not really affect 
normative content of the specifications.

I find myself wishing that the online discussion would focus only on the 
essentials, in order to get the specifications published sometime soon.

d/


----------
Dave Crocker <mailto:dave@tribalwise.com>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
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